


fire and ice and gin and tonic

by gnarleyquinn



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Red Room (Marvel), natasha and maria have a standoff at a bar and it's really tense and really hot, natasha is a vigilante, present day but shield hasn't fallen and hasn't recruited nat yet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-20
Updated: 2019-09-20
Packaged: 2020-10-24 13:20:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20706668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gnarleyquinn/pseuds/gnarleyquinn
Summary: “I just couldn’t imagine coming all this way just to have a glass of gin.”“I’m actually drinking it for the tonic.” She takes another sip, “Amazinghealth benefits.”ornatasha wants bad men to suffer and maria just wants a nap





	fire and ice and gin and tonic

Fire.

Maria’s senses are taken over for a few seconds. She blinks.

“Target in sight.”

She moves away from the lounge table she’d been sitting at, gliding through the smokey air of the gentlemen’s club and makes her way to the bar. She sits two stools down. Putting on her best smile as the bartender moves towards her, the Russian slips off her tongue effortlessly.

“Gin and tonic, please,” she says, “on my tab.”

She waits for a moment as the bartender mixes her drink. He slides it to her, the bar still slick from the spill of a drunkard she’d watched for the better part of the night. She takes a sip.

It burns.

“Shame.”

She looks over. The redhead is staring at her, quizzical eyes examining every inch of Maria’s existence. 

“Is that so?” she responds. She takes another sip, locked eyes unwavering. God, she _ hates _gin.

“I just couldn’t imagine coming all this way just to have a glass of gin.” The redhead cocks her head and Maria mimics her movement, adding a smirk.

“I’m actually drinking it for the tonic.” She takes another sip, “_Amazing _ health benefits.”

The redhead quirks an eyebrow. Maria goes on.

“Besides, does walking a couple of blocks to a stingy bar really require anything special?”

“I suppose not.” The redhead closes the gap, settling closely to Maria on the barstool next to her. The girl lets out a short laugh, looking down before gazing back into Maria’s eyes. “Tell me. That accent, it’s not from around here. What is it?”

Ice. 

Maria tenses as she feels the presence of a pistol against her side. Definitely no bigger than a .38, but definitely big enough to put a damper on her night.

“New York.” She drops the accent, but keeps the smile. “Manhattan.”

“I’ve always wanted to go there.” The redhead sighs, “Just a little too crowded for my taste.”

Maria calculates. She could do three things. One, she could stand down, which would not only blow her cover but blow the mission, two, she could signal to Coulson that she’d been compromised, but she hasn’t been, not yet, anyway, and three, she could play it cool. 

“Me too. That’s why I left.” Her frozen veins defrost a bit.

“Is that so?” 

“Moved here for college. If I was going to study Russian literature, why not do it in the Motherland itself?”

The redhead narrowed her eyes.

“Who’s your favorite author?”

“Pushkin.”

“Very original.” 

“What can I say, I’m a sucker for a twist.” 

Their hands move at matched speeds, the redhead almost blocking Maria before her own pistol is jammed into the Russian native’s abdomen. She almost forgot her fourth option: collateral damage.

The redhead drops her smirk.

“Who are you?” Her face is stoic, but her tone is vicious. Maria pulls her wild card.

“Wouldn’t you like to know, _ Natalia_.” 

Natalia Romanova, the Black Widow program’s best and brightest product, now turned vigilante, murdering the worst politicians that Moscow has to offer, aka, every _ single _man SHIELD has needed to extract information from in the last six months.

She can hear the low hum of Coulson buzzing through her ear, but she’s not paying attention to him. There’s nothing he can do until she signals him, anyway. 

“How do you know my name?” Natalia presses the pistol harder into Maria’s side. She almost winces, but disguises it with a well timed sip of what the redhead has now figured out is _ just _tonic.

“Like I said, I’m well read.” Maria watches as her eyes flitter over to the bartender, who has seemingly busied himself on the other side of the bar. She scans the rest of the room, probably picking the four or five other agents scattered around the musk.

“Give me one reason not to end this right here.” Natalia looks her dead in the eye, raged induced curiosity reflecting through her pupils.

“Vanko.”

It’s one name, but Maria can feel the impact it has on Natalia. The girl falters for a second, her grip loosens on her pistol and she repositions herself in her seat, but Maria doesn’t take the opening. Coulson’s shouting in her ear is starting to distract her. She’s going off script, she’s putting herself in danger. She doesn’t care. She wants a little more time. She watches the gears turn in Natalia’s head, calculating like Maria’s brain was moments ago, assessing all of her options in a game of chess wherein the most likely outcome is certainly death. Natalia presses the pistol harder. Maria fears she might bruise. Unsightly for a woman who wanted to lounge out tomorrow.

“What does _he _ have to do with me?” Natalia nearly spits the question.

Maria makes a split decision. She goes to brush her hair behind her ear pulling the standard SHIELD earpiece out from hiding. She drops it in the tonic. Natalia’s eyes go from Maria, to the drink, and back to Maria. Quizzical. 

Maria better be alive in time for the finale of Bachelor in Paradise.

“_I _ know, that _ you _ know, where he is.” 

“And what? You want me to give you his location?” Natalia smirks, “You could’ve just bought me a drink.”

“Not quite,” Maria sighs, she _ loves _ having the power turned to her, “I need you to not kill him.”

“Who said-”

“Eleven o’clock tonight, The Standard, one-thousand for the conversation, one-thousand for every _ fifteen _ extra minutes.” Maria laughs, almost incredulously, “How much do you think he was going to bring tonight? I bet he’s got, what, _ twenty-thousand _in that briefcase ready to go?. Lucky girl you would’ve been, huh.”

Natalia’s stare is still blank. 

“No plans have been cancelled yet.” 

“Yet. But they will be.” 

Natalia’s nostrils flare and Maria’s pretty sure the pistol actually makes an abrasion this time. She winces, unable to stop human instinct to flow through her veins for just a split second and it only seems to fuel the vigilante more. 

“I will blast the brains out of every single one of those men for what they did and I will not stop trying until my last breath, so _ you _ either stop me right now, or let me serve the deed that should’ve been punished decades ago.”

“Doing.” Maria glares into Natalia’s eyes, still full of anger, but now with a dash of confusion. 

“What?” Natalia cocks her pistol and Maria speaks quickly. She really doesn’t have her will finalized enough to go out right this very second.

“Did. You said what they did. But it’s for what they’re doing. They’ve started up again.” Natalia doesn’t speak, so Maria keeps going hoping somewhere she’s making a breakthrough. “It’s a new room, with a new name, and even wider circle of contacts. You can kill Vanko and his cronies, but it won’t end it. It’s bigger than you, or me.”

Natalia looks at her and Maria can’t tell what she’s thinking. What’s probably thirty seconds feels like five minutes, but it’s really life or death. Maria is trusting the mental stability of a formerly brainwashed assassin with her life right now when she could’ve had the bartender drug her from the get-go. Nobody can ever tell Maria that chivalry is dead.

“What’s in it for me?”

Maria swallows a smirk. The infamous question. This is all her. She could offer anything right now. Asylum, a mansion on a private island, a date with the next in line to the throne of England (sorry, Kate!), even-

“To take lead on this task force for SHIELD.” That is not what she wanted to say. Roll with it, _ Deputy Director_. “All of our resources, your own small team, _ unlimited _ hours of investigative time with our suspects, starting with Vanko.”

Natalia squints at Maria, probably trying to detect some form a lie in there. Maria doesn’t realize she’s heaves a sigh of relief when Natalia stashes away her pistol just as quickly as she pulled it out. Maria retracts her own, and nods to herself, pulling out a piece of paper. She slides it towards Natalia, barely avoiding the drops of alcohol on the bar. She stands.

“Meet me here tomorrow morning, eight o’clock. Don’t be late.” 

Natalia pockets the piece of paper, queue enough for Maria that the message is received. She begins to walk away when the sound of Natalia’s voice stops her in her tracks.

“Maria?” 

Maria laughs to herself before turning around, the now-familiar smirk engulfing Natalia’s features.

“You might want to update your records for payroll. I haven’t gone by Natalia in years. It’s Natasha, now.” 

“Will do, _ Natasha_.” 

Maria turns and walks out of the club, her cell phone ringing almost immediately after stepping out. She recognizes Coulson’s burner, switching to Russian as she heads back to the safehouse.

“Hello?” 

“What was that?”

“I recruited a tremendous resource to SHIELD.”

“Director that was _ not_-”

“I know, I wasted a perfectly good tonic.”

“You _ know _that’s not what I’m talking-”

“Hey, listen, we’ve got an early start tomorrow. See you for breakfast?” She doesn’t give him a chance to respond. “Great. See you then. Bye.”

She exhales as she reaches her door. Nothing like a day’s work of ruining evil men’s lives, that’s for sure. 


End file.
